During the longest Saturday of the year I was sitting watching the river flow, after some weeks of action packed adventures away, meetings with remarkable people and captaining the cricket team. I had also been tending to my vegetable garden and noticed that there was plenty of Swiss Chard that had been growing now for quite some time.
I was inspired to make a Swiss Chard Flan from a vegetarian cookbook from the 1970s my parents had that contained a Swiss Chard recipe.
Bob Dylan, the man who wrote the song "Watch the River Flow", was on the player in the shape of his dark, brooding 1997 masterpiece "Time out of Mind". The record was Dylan's first set of original songs for seven years and showed why it was wise for him to wait to make the record until he had enough superior songs. Everything on this disc is top-notch with highlights such as "not dark yet" and "make you feel my love" that was later covered by Adele. It's worth checking out at: Bob Dylan - time out of mind album - YouTube
The ingredients to make this flan are as follows:
Short Crust Pastry made from 250 grams of Plain Gluten Free Flour, 125 grams of Unsalted Butter and some milk to bind it together while kneading it.
Fifteen Swiss Chard Leaves, shredded into small pieces. I used some picked from my garden.
Three Duck Eggs, beaten and mixed with quarter of a pint of Almond Milk or Cow's Milk if you prefer.
Tablespoon of Nutmeg.
Grated Cheese of your choice..
The method to make this recipe goes like this:
1. Knead together the Flour and Butter together to create a breadcrumb mixture and then add some milk if necessary to bind the mixture together to make a dough.
2. Roll the dough out and add the pastry to a flan tin, lining the tin evenly with the pastry.
3. Add the Nutmeg, Egg and Milk Mixture and the Chard pieces to the pastry tin and space the mixture of ingredients evenly in the flan tin.
4. Grate the Cheese over the top of the mixture. I used a Cheddar flavoured with Rioja Wine.
5. Bake in the oven for thirty minutes on Gas Mark 5.
This recipe felt reasonably healthy with the fresh Swiss Chard while the Nutmeg added a sharp feel to the taste. The only thing I will do different next time I make this dish is use Cow's Milk in the Egg mixture as the Eggs bind together much better with Cow's Milk than with Almond Milk which left the dish a little watery. I later made it with Cow's Milk and got a much thicker mixture, as shown below, which enhanced the taste.
